Finally, after much anticipation, The World Martial Arts
Tournament begins!

well, that is the Junior Division does.

As the Junior Division is about to kick off, Goten and Trunks
are in the prep room when one of the larger boys in the tournament
decided that he would try to scare trunks before their first
match. However, all does not go according to plan when Trunks
doesn't flinch at the boys fake punch.

As the tournament is about to start, ZTV releases a "Historical
Recreation" of what happened at the end of the Cell games
when the transmission was interrupted. In it shows Hercule
saving the world and exposing Cell for the "Trickster"
that he really was

it was one of the funniest things in DBZ I have ever
seen in any saga.

After this enlightening documentary, we're finally ready
get into some action! The junior tournament begins with various
matches of the 35 children in the tournament. Contenders include
kids in oversized Boxing gloves, a sumo child, and some kid
who likes he really belongs in the Anime "Fist of the
North Star".

Finally we see Trunks in his first match with the Kid who
tried to intimidate him and is now sure he's going to beat
Trunks silly. The match lasts all of 3 seconds.

Now all we're waiting for is Goten's first match .

The Review

Pre-review- Before I get into the actual guts of the
episode I must first comment that this episode had a lot of
"Little Things" that made this episode extremely
entertaining to watch, but very hard to explain in a concise
manner. Therefore, I recommend that if you missed tonight's
episode (9/28), try to watch it when it re-airs on The Midnight
Run sometime next week (The midnight run is currently 3 episodes
behind, and due to Adult Swim on Thursdays, that "lag
time" should grow by one episode per week.).

Animation

Once again, TOEI brought out their "Important Episode"
team for today's animation. The key thing to look for in my
opinion is the "Facial Close-ups" to really find
out the quality of the animation. If they have the more "realistic"
nose and more detail in their teeth and eye lines, then chances
are they have their top teams working on the Cell-to-Cell
animation.

However,

There were some "Low-Quality" moments in this episode
that I find so interesting about DBZ. I noticed it particularly
on the Hercule close-ups right before they aired their "Historical
Recreation" on the big Blimp-O-Vision. I've never been
sure exactly why DBZ seems to exhibit this "phenomenon"
more than any other Anime I have ever seen, as style consistency
is so huge with animation and most other Anime's.

All in all however, the animation was very good. There really
wasn't much hardcore DBZ action today, so the fluidity was
not showcased as it is in more "Battle Happy" episodes.

Choreography

The chorography in today's episode was an interesting showcase.
Whenever Hercule is involved, be prepared for flashy backgrounds,
annoying poses and that laughing mug that we have all come
to know and love. (Shivers)

We really didn't see some of the unique perspective angles
that we normally do in the more intense DBZ episodes, every
shot was pretty much straight forward with the occasion wide
pan shot of the entire field, yet nothing that I can really
get too excited about.

Music

I don't know if there was an episode where I remember hearing
more of the Hercule Theme music. I'm sure there is, but that's
just about all I remember hearing that and the Hercule
laugh.

Again, I renew my complaint about FUNi not keeping the original
music.

If you want to experience that Music like it was intended,
just tune to the International Channel on Wednesday at 10pm
PST or Sunday at 6pm PST (I think .ITC might have changed
the time since I last saw it) and just listen to the music.
There are no subtitles, so chances are you wont understand
what they're saying, but at least you will have a chance to
see just how different the music selection is for certain
moments.

Dialogue

Once again, I was laughing all throughout the episode for
mainly one reason: The Historical Recreation of the Cell Games.

Have you ever seen poorly translated Chinese movies, especially
Chinese movies that are really good? A perfect example is
The Chinese Connection starring the legendary Bruce Lee. Excellent
movie, but poor English translations (hmmm doesn't this sound
like DBZ?)

Well guess what, FUNi in their own way was right on top of
this by making fun of that very thing with the Dialogue of
the HR (I will now for speed's sake refer to "Historical
Recreation" as HR).

Example:

HR Cell: Ha! I have beaten you because you are not strong.
In fact you are weak.

HR Goku: He is right, we are beaten.

You know what this reminds me of?

BirdMan.

But my favorite line in the HR was this. (And I even wrote
it down to make sure I quoted it perfectly):

HR Hercule: Your useless tricks are stupid and useless.

That was too perfect. I really wish they could take some
of this new found wit FUNi has so recently found and put some
of it in more episodes we'll see how that pans out.

Plot

It's about time. That's pretty much all I have to say about
that. Now that the Tournament is underway, things will really
start to pick up in the plot department. All I can say is
make sure that you keep up, as both some interesting characters
will show up as well as some good hearty DBZ Action.

As far as Today goes, there really was not much in the way
of plot, and FUNi didn't try to force it.

Just make sure you keep watching.

Overall

Why do I love reviewing episodes so much? So I can extol
the virtues of DBZ to worldwide community. This episode had
a sliver of action with Trunks and a whole lot of humor! I
was literally laughing throughout the entire episode.

Some things obviously I would change if I was God of All
Things Related to the Production and Distribution of DBZ,
but why nitpick over things you can't really change? It was
an excellent show and definitely worth 25 minutes of your
time.